Build­ing Blocks for a Bet­ter Future

The best alter­na­tive for tomor­row should be bet­ter than the best alter­na­tive avail­able today. How do we get there, when “cog­ni­tion” and “brain fit­ness” remain elu­sive con­cepts in pop­u­lar cul­ture? I believe that the lack of pub­lic edu­ca­tion is the major obsta­cle that lim­its the brain fit­ness field’s poten­tial to deliver real-world ben­e­fits, since only informed demand will ensure the ongo­ing devel­op­ment of ratio­nal, struc­tured “rules of the road.” What could be done to address this and other par­tic­u­lar obsta­cles? Read the rest of this entry »

Engag­ing peo­ple where they are in the life-course

Eighty per­cent of the 38,000 adults over age 50 who were respon­ders in the 2010 AARP Mem­ber Opin­ion Sur­vey indi­cated “stay­ing men­tally sharp” was their top ranked inter­est and con­cern (Dinger, 2010). What exactly does this phrase mean? And what role can tech­nol­ogy play in “stay­ing men­tally sharp”? Intel CEO Paul Otellini has said, “You have to start by think­ing about what peo­ple want to do… and work back­ward.” Read the rest of this entry »

The ter­mi­nol­ogy “fun­da­men­tal attri­bu­tion error” describes the ten­dency to over­value personality-based expla­na­tions for observed human behav­iors, while under­valu­ing sit­u­a­tional expla­na­tions for those behav­iors.  I believe that a pri­mary rea­son behind many per­ceived and real eth­i­cal chal­lenges in the brain fit­ness field is due not so much to cer­tain stake­hold­ers’ lack of per­sonal or pro­fes­sional ethics, but derives from the flawed soci­etal con­struct that under­pins cur­rent, rel­e­vant inno­va­tions. To improve the ethics of the brain fit­ness busi­ness and its appli­ca­tion (and empower con­sumers’ informed deci­sion mak­ing), there must first be agree­ment about a mean­ing­ful, appro­pri­ate way to ana­lyze and guide inno­va­tion. This is the crux of the prob­lem. The cur­rent med­ical model is not up to the task at hand, since it is heav­ily skewed toward inva­sive drugs and devices dri­ven by disease-based mod­els, and fails to lever­age Read the rest of this entry »

Stress man­age­ment is among the pil­lars of brain health main­te­nance. High and sus­tained lev­els of stress can indeed dam­age neu­rons, espe­cially in areas of the brain respon­si­ble for learn­ing and memory.

What about the effect of stress on the devel­op­ing brains of infants and chil­dren? What are the cog­ni­tive con­se­quences? How can these be pre­vented? This inter­est­ing arti­cle reports find­ings from both ani­mal and human research answer­ing these questions:

Brain devel­op­ment goes through sen­si­tive peri­ods dur­ing which stres­sors and nur­tur­ing expe­ri­ences can have last­ing effects

Chaos in the home and incon­sis­tent par­ent­ing impairs devel­op­ment of self reg­u­la­tory behav­iors, Read the rest of this entry »

Yes­ter­day I had the chance to chat with Yaakov Stern, lead­ing Cog­ni­tive Reserve researcher at Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity, and then with a group of 25 life­long learn­ers in Ari­zona who attended a brain fit­ness class (hello, Robert and friends!) based on our con­sumer guide The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness. On reflec­tion, I found both con­ver­sa­tions to be very stim­u­lat­ing for the same rea­son: they were forward-looking, focused not so much on sta­tus quo but on how emerg­ing research, tech­nol­ogy and trends may impact our soci­ety and lives in years to come. Let’s con­tinue the con­ver­sa­tion. Let me share the 10 main trends that we analyzed/ fore­casted in our book, and then ask you, sharp read­ers, to add your own 2 cents to the dis­cus­sion. Read the rest of this entry »

The July/ August 2009 issue of The Jour­nal on Active Aging includes my arti­cle Why We Need to Retool “Use It Or Lose It“

An excerpt:

“By now you have prob­a­bly heard about brain plas­tic­ity, the life­long capac­ity of the brain to change and rewire itself in response to the stim­u­la­tion of learn­ing and expe­ri­ence. The lat­est sci­en­tific research shows that spe­cific lifestyles and actions can improve the health and level of func­tion­ing of our brains, no mat­ter our age.

Of par­tic­u­lar impor­tance to main­tain­ing cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing through life are the hip­pocam­pus (deep inside the brain, part of what is called the lim­bic sys­tem), which plays a role in learn­ing and mem­ory; and the frontal lobes (behind your fore­head), which are key to main­tain­ing decision-making and auton­omy. Is there a way to phys­i­cally pro­tect these parts of the aging brain? Yes. But the right answer is far from “do one more cross­word puz­zle” or “do more X” (what­ever X is). The key is to add sig­nif­i­cantly dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties to ensure a flow of nov­elty, vari­ety and chal­lenge, com­bin­ing phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise while not ignor­ing fac­tors such as stress man­age­ment and bal­anced nutrition.

We need, in other words, to retool our under­stand­ing and prac­tice of “Use it or lose it.” We must focus on the impor­tance of get­ting out of our phys­i­cal and men­tal rou­tines and activ­i­ties to get the ben­e­fits of real exercise—physical and mental.”

Con­tinue read­ing Why We Need to Retool “Use It Or Lose It”

Last week, in this article’s first part, we dis­cussed the impor­tance of actu­ally teach­ing chil­dren how to get them­selves into a phys­i­cal state of being relaxed, explored sev­eral sug­ges­tions I hope you found useful.

Let’s con­tinue.

Teach­ers can help stu­dent over­come stress by teach­ing them to iden­tify the imped­i­ments they might encounter in doing a cer­tain task.

The teacher can ask:

What’s going to get in the way of you doing this work?
He or she may have to jump-start the stu­dents think­ing by sug­gest­ing such things as:
– com­pet­ing events (fam­ily activ­i­ties, friends call, IM-ing, new video game, etc.)
– lack of ade­quate place to study
– inad­e­quate prior prepa­ra­tion or skills
– a neg­a­tive atti­tude (this is not nec­es­sary, I can’t do math, I’ll never need to know this, etc).
– health fac­tors (I’m sick; I’m tired)

Con­versely, teach­ers have to teach stu­dents to iden­tify the enhancers; What’s going to make it more likely that you will do this, and do this well?
(exam­ples)
– I have con­fi­dence in my abil­ity
– I feel com­pe­tent in this skill
– I am com­mit­ted to learn­ing this because: I have the nec­es­sary resources to com­plete this task, such as mate­ri­als, sources of infor­ma­tion, peo­ple sup­ports; par­ents, tutor, other kids

Teach­ers can turn dis­tress into de-stress by using the Lan­guage of Success

The key is to de-emphasize PRAISE and empha­size SELF-APPRAISAL.

Teach­ers can encour­age self-evaluation by Read the rest of this entry »

Teach­ing kids how to relax.

Con­sider this vignette:

–Rox­anne: (agi­tated and loudly) I can’t stand this freakin book!

–Teacher: Rox­anne, you need to take it easy. Just calm down! Try to relax.You need to fin­ish your reading.

–Rox­anne: (to her­self) Right easy for you to say, teacher. But very hard for me to do. What do you mean calm down? I feel like my head is going to explode.

–Teacher: (see­ing no response) Well if you can’t set­tle down, maybe a trip to the office will help you!

Some kids are so agi­tated that even if they know how to relax, they can’t. If you think about it, calm­ing down when you’re upset is the hard­est time to do it! Other kids can’t calm down or relax because they don’t know what that feels like. Teach­ers, occu­pa­tional ther­a­pists, phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion teach­ers and par­ents need to actu­ally teach chil­dren (of all ages) how to get them­selves into a phys­i­cal state of being relaxed. This doesn’t hap­pen auto­mat­i­cally. If it did, there wouldn’t be so many adult yoga classes!

Set­ting the men­tal and emo­tional stage for success.

Teach­ers who want to reduce stress and increase learn­ing know that get­ting kids into a pos­i­tive mind­set will do both. They say Read the rest of this entry »

You may have watched the new series Lie To Me, with Tim Roth, based on the work of Paul Ekman.

The sec­ond episode, which you can watch for free via Hulu.com Here, is pretty inter­est­ing, but the best part hap­pens in the begin­ning, so you only need to watch a few min­utes to learn why what are called “lie detec­tors” are noth­ing but biofeed­back sys­tems that mea­sure phys­i­o­log­i­cal anxiety.

Biofeed­back can be a very effec­tive train­ing tool for emo­tional self-regulation and stress man­age­ment, pre­cisely because it enables a faster feedback-based learn­ing loop. Indeed, we are see­ing a grow­ing num­ber of appli­ca­tions in the mar­ket, with names such as EmWave, StressEraser, RES­PeR­ATE, Jour­ney to the Wild Divine, and others.

Sim­ply, don’t believe the tech­nol­ogy is an effec­tive lie detector.

Car­o­line and I wrote an arti­cle on Paul Ekman’s work a cou­ple of years ago — let me repub­lish it now, given his work has made it all the way to main­stream TV!

Paul Ekman has con­ducted exten­sive research on iden­ti­fy­ing emo­tions through facial expres­sions. As part of that research, and as part of the power of dis­ci­pline and train­ing, he learned how to con­sciously manip­u­late 42 facial mus­cles, includ­ing many that in most of us are beyond our con­trol, and even awareness.

In the 60s and 70s when Ekman began look­ing into the uni­ver­sal­ity of facial expres­sions, all the major con­tem­po­rary social sci­en­tists, like Mar­garet Mead, believed that expres­sions were cul­tur­ally learned, not innate. He trav­eled all over the world with pic­tures of peo­ple mak­ing dis­tinct facial expres­sions and found peo­ple in cul­tures every­where, from mod­ern to stone age, agreed on the emo­tion behind the expres­sion. He then turned to Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago I had the plea­sure to give a talk to one hun­dred or so staff mem­bers at New York Pub­lic Library. As you would expect, it was a very stim­u­lat­ing group, and one of the par­tic­i­pants, Brigid Caha­lan, just wrote a fun blog post on her impres­sions from the event:

Brain Fit­ness at New York Pub­lic Library:

- “After attend­ing a recent staff train­ing ses­sion offered by the library’s Office of Staff Devel­op­ment, I decided to return to a habit of my childhood–eating sar­dines.“
– key pil­lars for brain health …are… “1) A bal­anced diet; 2) Car­dio­vas­cu­lar phys­i­cal exer­cise; 3) Stress man­age­ment; and 4) Brain exer­cise: Nov­elty, Vari­ety, Chal­lenge (as long as it doesn’t stress us out).”

Read full arti­cle: here.

Com­ment: A very inter­est­ing trend of observe — the grow­ing role of pub­lic libraries in pro­vid­ing qual­ity brain health infor­ma­tion and even, why not, becom­ing community-based brain fit­ness des­ti­na­tions. After all, is it not men­tal stim­u­la­tion of all sorts, incor­po­rat­ing Nov­elty, Vari­ety, and Chal­lenge, what they truly offer?